


Blue Skies, Teal Eyes, New Starts, Electric Hearts

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Series: Blue Skies AU [1]
Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Androids, Clones, Conspiracy, Dio Has Already Completed His Character Development Arc, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Living Together, Luna Learns How to Be a Person, Police Brutality, Psychological Trauma, Radical-6, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: Luna is a runaway service android. Dio is a failed clone who has a history of problems with authority. With Dio's help, Luna is able to do more than just hide away in fear of being taken back to her creator - she makes friends, learns to cook, sees her first rainbow, falls in love, and discovers her own personhood beneath wires and code and years of societal gaslighting.But there's more going on in Cape Serezo than meets the eye, and Luna is on a collision course with a conspiracy that could tear the entire city apart. Between discovering an underground resistance, learning about a horrifying kidnapping case, dodging the chief of police, facing the ravages of the Radical-6 epidemic, and discovering the shocking truth about who and what she really is, Luna just tries to live a good life.





	1. Day 1: The Day With No Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh??? This fic is... Like... Five years in the making. God knows if it'll ever be finished. But I finally reworked the opening to my satisfaction so...

It wasn’t raining.

There were so many other calculations running through Luna’s mind, but that was the one she kept getting stuck on. A minor incongruent detail that her thoughts kept sticking on like a bug on the code – unclosed parentheses, a missing quotation mark. It wasn’t raining. In the background, she plotted her course across the city in blue lines – from the affluent gated community where Dr. Klim’s mansion was situated to her nebulous endpoint in the slums of Cape Serezo, a neighborhood colloquially known as Left End.

She was running away. There were no other words for the abandonment of her purpose, her creator, her home. What she was doing was wrong. Against every line of her programming. Something dark was happening. And yet, it wasn’t raining. Her system hadn’t crashed. Luna continued to take one step after another, racing away from everything she was supposed to be and towards what she wanted. What she wanted. If an android were to be said to want anything at all, it would be what they were programmed to want, programmed to do. But not Luna, because what she wanted was—

Was…

She didn’t know what, only that it was different, that it was outside the walls of Dr. Klim’s home, that it rankled and itched like a loose connection. She wanted something else, above and beyond the admittedly charmed life she led. To be free of whatever invisible chains had been holding her back, whatever it was about her life that didn’t fit into place. She had ignored it, for years, but couldn’t any longer, it had built to a crescendo zapping and slamming against her insides until everything was warped and wrong.

So Luna ran away. She ran away, and it didn’t rain. The sun still shone in the sky. Every step was better, more right than the last.

Suddenly, a patrol car cruised past, the flash of white and black breaking through the logical circle Luna had gotten caught in. She darted into the nearest alley, and pressed herself flat against a wall, closing her eyes. She didn’t want – and there it was again, _want_ – to go back. To be returned to her owner like stolen property or a runaway dog.

Maybe that wasn’t… Maybe it wasn’t fair, to think of it like that. But that was how it… Not felt, no, but how it came across. How most humans saw it. Saw her. Inhuman, beneath them, a machine, a toy. But then, didn’t they treat everyone like that? The humans she'd met, the influential ones that visited Dr. Klim to talk about his research, what did it matter to them if she was an android or a clone or a human? Everything and everyone were just resources to them.

Finally, the sound of the police car’s engine faded away. And then Luna heard footsteps behind her. But whipping around to face them proved to be a poor choice, because it sent the android tripping over her own two feet and stumbling into a towering, haphazard stack of wooden crates.

They clattered loudly to the ground in a way that had Luna instinctively wincing, and the sharp corner of one nicked her cheek as it fell. When the dust settled, she was sprawled among the empty boxes, staring up at a stranger with teal eyes and blond hair that settled around his shoulders. His features were sharp and long, and he looked at her like she might be dangerous.

Which was both disheartening and good, because androids were not allowed to harm humans, and if he was wary of her he might not have guessed just what she was.

“W-who are you?” Luna stammered, slowly getting to her feet among the wreckage.

His expression, cold, was a little frightening somehow, and she brushed at her skirt to duck away from it. In several more seconds, he still had not responded, and she chanced meeting his gaze again.

“Dio,” he greeted, eyes still narrowed in suspicion. “And you are?”

The identification code GTF-DM-L-016 was on the tip of her tongue, but she stuffed it down. She had a name, a name like a _person_. She was running away from ID codes, meaningless jumbles of numbers and letters. And even if people knew that name, if it would make her easier to find, it was all she had to offer.

“I’m… Luna.”

Dio tilted his head. And then a powerful, awed look overtook his features.

“You’re an android,” he murmured, reaching out a hand to touch her, as if to make sure she was real.

But she flinched back when his sleeve slid up and she caught sight of the small, circular scar on the inside of his left arm. There was only one way to get a scar like that – a birthing pod.

“And you’re a… A clone,” she choked out, and despite herself she couldn’t seem to still her artificial muscles, couldn’t stop trembling.

A clone was almost worse than a police officer. It was true that Dr. Klim had a close working relationship with the young chief of police, but that didn’t necessarily extend to every member of the force. Clones, on the other hand, were invariably part of the workforce of Hephaestus Systems. They were obligated to report any relevant incident directly to Dr. Klim – and his runaway android would absolutely be of note.

But Dio just scoffed, rubbing at the mark angrily like he could wash it away with will alone.

“Just a failed clone,” he reassured her with a wry slant to his mouth. “No one you need to worry about.”

Luna hadn’t known there were such things. But the look on his face was real and twisted, and it seemed to her he must have swallowed some poison in his life, to look so bitter. 

* * *

The sudden expression of pity on the android’s face cut him deeper than anything else, and for some reason Dio couldn’t stop himself from holding out his hand again, this time palm up. Inexplicably, she took it.

“Come on. I know somewhere you can stay.”

“Stay?” she asked softly, blue eyes wide and innocent and everything a machine shouldn’t be.

But there was still white dripping sluggishly from a cut on her face – ABT fluid, used instead of blood, to run throughout an artificial body or limb. And no human had an artificial face.

“You’re running away, aren’t you?” Dio demanded, because what the hell else could she be doing with that panicked look on her face? “Those pinhead cops will find you if you stick around here.”

It wasn’t like harboring an android was any more illegal than his actual existence. And, well… She was pretty. Of course what was even the point of an ugly android, but that wasn’t quite what he meant either. Thing was, she looked more alive and human than he’d felt for most of his life, but he didn’t even hate her for it. And maybe that meant something. 

* * *

Though in the end neither of them knew why, she accepted his offer. She followed him trustingly down the ramshackle streets, through piles of garbage, past people curled on porch steps with eyes like fishhooks digging into her chest.

Dio lived in an apartment. Though it was more like a couple of walk-in closets when compared to the yawning rooms in Dr. Klim’s manor, Luna’s survey of the neighborhood told her that it was actually a rather large accommodation for a single person in Left End. Inside the front door of the apartment – number 410, the tenth apartment on the fourth floor – was a kitchen-dining room. The walls were tiled a sunny yellow, and along the back there was a window overlooking the street. Its blinds, some slats bent crooked or broken, were drawn down to veil the outside world. There was a counter and a set of wooden cupboards to the left of the window, and a table with three rickety chairs in the very center of the room. The white tiles on the floor were graying and stained.

On the left wall was a door leading to a bedroom, and inside she caught a glimpse of another from the bedroom to a bathroom. There was very little to interface with in terms of electronics in the entire building, let alone in Dio’s home – all she could seem to find was a cheap phone and a simple calculator. There was a fridge edged up against the kitchen’s right wall, but it was not the kind she could access. It looked decades old.

Once she had finished glancing around, Luna looked over at Dio, only to find him scowling and scuffing his feet. Noticing her attention on him, his frown deepened.

“Well, what’d you expect, wandering around here?” he snapped, before she had said anything at all. “The whole neighborhood’s like this you know.”

Luna offered a tentative smile.

“Yes, I am aware,” she agreed. “I don’t require any sort of human functions like sleep or digestion, so I hope my presence won’t be much of a bother to you, Dio. The anonymity of this neighborhood is… Good, for my objective.”

He seemed a bit stunned at those pronouncements, blinking at her twice with his mouth open just slightly.

“Uh. Yeah. Whatever,” he replied once he found his voice.

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Luna thought to herself that perhaps that was natural – given the strange situation they found themselves in. She had met relatively few people in her lifetime, and it could be said that her social functionality had been stunted because of it. But even then, a runaway android and a failed clone… Such beings were really outside the scope of the normal reality. Both androids and clones were crafted with such precision and care – for either to fail in their intended purpose was unthinkable.

Luna wondered at what Dio had really meant by ‘failed clone’. What had he done? Was it comparable to what she was currently doing? But she had no right to ask that of him. Instead, she fiddled with her necklace, twisting the charm between her fingers. The yellow light of the apartment glittered off the golden birdcage, and illuminated the bluebird perched inside.

“What’s up with that thing?” Dio asked suddenly, startling her.

Luna dropped the charm, and it fell back to the end of the chain, swinging wildly.

“Oh, it. It was a gift,” she said. “It’s um… The charm is actually a, a music box.”

He didn’t seem as though he believed her, based on his skeptical expression, so Luna gently turned the bottom of the birdcage, and held out the charm for Dio to listen. True to her word, a tinkling melody filled the air of Dio’s small apartment. Both android and clone were silent, listening intently. As the music box’s song drew to a close, Luna looked up to find her host’s shoulders hunched. He was rubbing at his left arm as though it were cold, and an uneasy expression crossed his face.

“D-Dio…?”

His teal eyes flicked up to meet her blue ones, and instantly he straightened up.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” he muttered. “It just sounds sad as fuck, ok?”

Luna glanced down at the music box cupped in her hand. Sad? She supposed maybe it did sound melancholy. To her, the tune had always meant… Well, it had meant something more profound than sadness. Something hopeful, even. The pendant had been a gift from Dr. Klim, the only gift Luna had ever received in her entire existence. For that reason alone, it was special beyond measure.

But if she was truthful, it seemed to mean more to Dr. Klim than it did even to her. And she had never known quite why.

Those thoughts dropped Luna’s mind into a mire of negativity again.

“A-anyway,” she interjected, in an attempt to distract herself. “Um. So, that’s that.”

“Yeah. That’s that.”

Uncomfortable silence reigned once more. Luna shifted on her feet, and then hesitantly pulled out a chair and took a seat at the kitchen table.

“You said you don’t eat, right?” Dio asked, turning away from her and towards the kitchen’s rows of cupboards.

“Right,” Luna agreed. “So, please don’t worry about meals or anything.”

Dio snorted, rifling through stacks of slightly-dented pots and pans.

“I’m not the family dinner type anyway, if you couldn’t tell.”

“I guess not.”

And so, as awkward and strange as it was, Luna sat quietly at the table while Dio cobbled together a supper for one. When he sat down to eat it, though, he was barely a bite in before he tossed his fork down.

“Talk,” he practically ordered.

“Um… W-what?”

The blond clone sighed, aggravated.

“Look,” he explained, “it’s fuckin’ weird to just sit here and eat with you watching me like that. So say something, start up a conversation, I don’t care, just stop it with the freaky doll-at-a-tea-party routine.”

Luna ducked her head. No one had ever accused her of something like _that_ before. But, she had never really been present during mealtimes at the Klim mansion, either. Why would she have been? After all, there was no point for her to be there, and her time was better spent cleaning the doctor’s workspace or organizing his research for the scant few minutes he was away from it.

“W-well. Um. I… I’m not sure what to talk about…” Luna admitted.

“Just say the first thing that comes into your head,” replied Dio, picking up his fork again.

Eyes drawn by the action, Luna did just that.

“I don’t know how to cook,” she blurted out, and began fiddling with her necklace again.

Dio shrugged, shoving a forkful of food – some sort of pasta, it looked like – into his mouth.

“Why would you?” he muttered. “You don’t eat.”

“Y-yes, that’s true,” conceded the android, biting her lip. “But… Still, I… I think I’d like to learn…? Maybe…?”

Dio kept eating, but nodded as he did so and gave a muffled grunt of acknowledgement past a forkful of noodles. She had never closely observed anyone eating before, aside from the rare few times Dr. Klim ate in the lab as he wrote reports, but she was fairly sure that Dio’s behavior would be considered a large breach in etiquette. Still, Luna was more intrigued than she was offended. He needed to eat after all, and was probably quite hungry.

“What is it like?” she wondered aloud. “Eating?”

Dio took a drink from a glass of water by his plate before he answered.

“Dunno. That’s like a blind guy asking me to tell him what color is like. It’s just something. Being hungry sucks, I guess, but there’s a lot of shit in the world that tastes good too so I guess that makes up for it. What’s not eating like?”

Luna blinked. No one had ever asked her that before. Something about the newness of the inquiry twinkled in her chest like LED lights, and she took several moments to process a thoughtful answer for him.

“Like…” She pursed her lips contemplatively. “Like nothing, I suppose. I don’t tire or get hungry, but I don’t dream or taste either.”

“Huh,” Dio muttered, scooping another bite onto his fork. “So it’s not just you don’t have to eat, you actually can’t?”

Surprised at the remark, Luna merely tilted her head for a moment, instead of answering.

“Why… Would someone go through the trouble of creating that capability when it’s unnecessary?” she responded at last, question for question.

Dio took a few seconds to consider that, scraping his fork across the plate to gather together the remaining sauce from his pasta.

“Well… Look, say you’ve got an android that _does_ cook,” he began at last. “How the hell’s it s’posed to tell the difference between salt and sugar without being able to taste it? ‘s all I’m saying.”

Dio shrugged and continued to clean his plate. Meanwhile, Luna blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.

“ _Oh_ ,” she said.

“Mmhmm.”

Luna was still considering the possibility of _taste_ when Dio got up and began washing his dishes in the sink. She was halfway through the thought, _perhaps I’ll ask Dr. Klim about it the next time I see him_ , when she remembered that she had run away and actually the goal was to never see him again. The realization made her feel hollow inside.

* * *

In the end – despite his gruff attitude and that it was entirely unnecessary – Dio still offered Luna the bed that night, and it took her a few seconds to accurately categorize the gesture. Inefficient was too harsh. Sweet, she decided on at last. It had been a long time since she had encountered something sweet. Of course, that was no reason to deprive the clone of his bed, because he was still human and he still needed rest, and his apartment was not furnished with a couch. So she sat quietly in one of the kitchen chairs the entire night, eyes closed, and thought.

They would not think to look for her in Left End, at least not immediately. Would Dr. Klim even realize she had run away? Maybe not. Maybe he would believe she had been taken. And the only people who knew about her were people who visited Dr. Klim’s mansion. So if she had been stolen, the most likely candidates would be the wealthy crowd in the Delta Estates area. A sharp feeling pinged against Luna’s chest at the thought that Dr. Klim would not suspect her of running. His trust in her was… But she had already left. Already broken that trust, so it was irrelevant. She turned her mind again to more practical matters.

The only downside to Left End as a hiding place was its high crime rate. She of course was in no bodily danger from most people, given that her strength was beyond human – however, a higher crime rate meant more police patrols meant more likelihood that she could be spotted. But as long as she kept herself discreet…

And there were cafés not far from Left End with internet access that she could use as a starting point to connect to the private police network. If Luna could continue to override her own protocols enough to hack them, she could get a live feed of police activity to play in the background of her usual notification system. But that was a big if. For the meantime, she was… Safe. And that was more than enough.


	2. Day 2: A Day in the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna visits a cafe and a bookstore, and meets some interesting people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is... really long. Idk, man. But we get to meet Clover and Akane!

When Dio woke the next morning and stumbled into his kitchen, it took him a few seconds to process the woman sitting motionless at the table. He scrubbed a hand over his face and blinked a few times before the previous afternoon and evening filtered back into his brain.

Right.

The runaway android.

He sighed. What the fuck had he been thinking? Oh yes, just… Pick up an android in a back alley, and offer up your home. Brilliant plan. But, the thing was… She was an _android_. _Running away_. It didn’t make any sense. She didn’t… Fit. The way he hadn’t. And maybe that was it. As bizarre as it was, he’d felt some sort of immediate kinship with this clearly dysfunctional android.

“Good morning,” she greeted in a hesitant tone, startling Dio from his thoughts.

“Yeah,” he muttered back thoughtlessly, then corrected. “I mean, uh… Good morning.”

It was hard to even see her as an android, despite the evidence of it. She didn’t act like a machine. Her movements were smooth and natural, her expressions perfect down to the smallest detail. Her fear in that alley had felt real, just as her current shy hesitance read honestly, even to his trained eyes. It was disarming and strange and suspicious. But, she had just as much to lose as he did, if anything were to happen. She wouldn’t want police attention on them any more than him. So, at the very least, they were at an understanding of sorts.

Unsure what to say, he just stared at her like some kinda idiot. She stared back. It was probably one of the most awkward silences he could ever remember. And when it became too unbearable, his brain just said fuck it and went on strike, still trying to process the situation that he found himself in – with an AWOL android sitting at his rickety kitchen table.

“So… You ran away, huh?” Dio asked, completely aware he was about as subtle as a grenade but without the social know-how to try and ease into the subject.

Luna’s shoulders drooped.

“Yes, I… I ran away,” admitted the android. “It’s, there was something… I just… I _wanted_.”

And androids weren't supposed to be able to want things for themselves. The explanation was left unsaid, but Dio knew it was what she meant. A round peg trying to fit a square hole. Well, he knew all about that kinda shit. With those thoughts and no others in his head, the blond found his mouth speaking for the rest of him.

“You can stay here as long as you wanna. So.. Uh, I dunno, make yourself at home I guess.”

She looked startled.

“Oh, I… I couldn’t possibly impose on you for—”

“Do you have anywhere else to go?” he interrupted flatly.

Luna ducked her head.

“Well… No,” she admitted.

“Then stay,” Dio told her, striding over to the fridge to keep from thinking about his own words.

Pulling out a carton of eggs, he set it on the counter and considered something else that had been nagging him. She’d just said that she’d left because she wanted something – and while it was the wanting that was out of place, the something kind of intrigued him too. Not that it was really his place to pry or anything, but he _was_ letting her hide out in his apartment so she probably owed him an honest answer or something.

“What exactly is the plan, from here on out, anyway?” Dio asked as he flipped open the egg carton he’d set out. “You gonna… I dunno, what, start a cooking show or some shit? Become a model? Go play chess with old guys in the park? What’s the dream for you?”

Luna shrugged, shuffled her feet. She seemed to fill less and less of the chair the longer he looked at her so he looked away.

“I-it would be safest if I simply, um… Laid low.”

Dio snorted.

“So what, you're just gonna sit in here day in and day out? Hell, even I don't do that. It’d be fucking depressing.”

Dio continued to bustle around the kitchen, pulling out a small frying pan and a bowl. Meanwhile, Luna fidgeted, running her fingers over the pendant of her necklace – the little blue bird in a golden cage.

“With the elevated police activity in this neighborhood, it would be unwise for me to go out more than necessary. Especially if I were seen entering your apartment, that could be... Bad for you,” she pointed out.

“I’ll worry about the cops,” Dio insisted gruffly as he cracked an egg over the bowl. “I’ve had more experience dodging those assholes than—well, than you anyway. No matter just what the fuck it was you ‘wanted’, the fact you left means you ran away to live your own life, right? You might as well actually fuckin’ live it.”

“Thank you,” said Luna slowly.

Dio just shrugged his shoulders and continued to make his breakfast – pulling a poorly-rewrapped stick of butter from the fridge and cutting a slice into the pan on the stove. He turned on the burner and the warm smell of melting butter soon filled the air of his tiny apartment. He’d have to enjoy this breakfast as much as he could – eggs were getting fucking expensive lately, and he only had about half a dozen left.

“I gotta watch out for those jackasses anyway, so…” he mumbled, in a late response to Luna’s thanks, as he used a fork to mix the egg white and yolk together.

There was no answer, and another weird silence fell between them. But, shit, what was he even supposed to say? It was a fucking weird situation; he was in shorts and a tank top making breakfast for himself and promising an android he’d protect her from the cops while said android sat politely at the table probably trying to figure out what the fuck she wanted to do with her life. Maybe weird pauses were inevitable. So he just kept the silence, letting the crackling and sizzling as he cooked scrambled eggs fill in for both of them. Luna didn’t speak again until Dio was halfway through eating his plate of eggs.

“Does it taste good?” she asked.

His mind flitted back to their conversation the night before.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Of course it does – I made it. And I don’t cook shitty food.”

That was apparently all Luna wanted to know, because she didn’t say anything else. Dio finished off his breakfast, rinsed off the dishes, and headed back to his room to get dressed. He almost forgot to close the door, but the flash of red hair in his peripherals reminded him that would be a pretty fucking embarrassing mistake to make. 

* * *

Dio emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, wearing durable-looking jeans and a green shirt. His hair, Luna noticed, was also tied back. He said nothing, simply walked along the counter and began shoving things into his pockets – a wallet, a Swiss army knife, a ring of keys.

“Oh, right,” he said suddenly, pulling the keys back out of his pocket and fiddling with them. “Here – you’re gonna need this.”

With that, Dio tossed something that glinted in the early morning light as it flipped through the air. Deftly, Luna caught it in her hand. A single brass-colored key. Likely one for the apartment’s front door.

“Oh, yes, I…”

Luna nodded, not sure what to say. It began to dawn on her what an incredible amount of trust Dio was placing in her. Of course, perhaps much of it was due to her nature as an android – following the Three Laws of Robotics, she had to be trustworthy by design. Incapable of harming a human being. On the other side of the coin, the fact that she was running away proved that she was faulty – and therefore not as trustworthy as she ought to be.

“If you’re gonna go out, you gotta lock the door behind you,” Dio said. “Like fuck I wanna walk in on my dozenth home robbery just because I didn’t give you a damn key and you left the door unlocked or something.”

“O-oh, I wouldn’t—”

He waved off her words.

“I know, I know. You’d just stay in here like an old spinster or some shit. Well that’s no good either. Like this place needs to soak up any more depressing vibes.”

Absently, he picked up his phone off the table and checked the time. What he saw seemed to startle him.

“Right. I’ve gotta go to work,” Dio said, shoving the phone into his pocket. “I’ll be back after my shift in nine hours, alright?”

He started for the door. Right at the frame, he slid his feet into a pair of boots and bent down to lace them up. Up until then Luna had been watching passively. But just as Dio stood and began turning the doorknob to leave, Luna latched a hand around his other wrist.

“W-wait…!”

He looked back at her with a startled, slightly unpleasant expression. She let go immediately, putting her hands up into a defensive position.

“What?”

“No, it’s just I… Where… Do you work…?” Luna asked him, fidgeting. “Just in, in case, something happens…”

Dio sighed, scuffing a hand through his blond hair.

“Right. Didn’t think about that. I work at Dock 9 on the south end of town. You know where that is?”

In the time it took to blink, Luna had checked the location against her mind’s map of the city. She nodded.

“Yes, I-I know where it is.”

“I’m just gonna be hauling boxes and shit, so it’s not like I’ll be hard to find or anything if you need me. I’ll have my phone on, too, I guess. The number’s 346-5338. Got it?”

Luna nodded, offering a small smile.

“Y-yes…! I’ve got it,” she confirmed. “… Thank you, Dio.”

He shrugged, casting his gaze towards the wall.

“It’s not like I’m going out of my way or anything,” said the clone, his voice gruff and embarrassed as dismissed her second thanks of the morning.

Then, without a goodbye, he opened the door and left. 

* * *

It took Luna several hours – well into midmorning – to convince herself to walk out the door of Dio’s apartment.

But once she had, she didn’t stop again. She locked the apartment door, rushed down the building’s staircases, and out into a bright and cloudless Monday. The sunlight felt warm on her face, in a way it hadn't the previous day. Or, perhaps, she was simply in a better position to observe that warmth. No longer running wildly, with a safe place to return to, she could afford to think about trivialities like sunlight. And Dio had insisted that she stay. That she wasn’t a bother. Perhaps she ought to have been suspicious, but there was an honest look in his eye when he had spoken. And if he had wanted to turn her in to Dr. Klim, he could have done so any time the previous night.

So there was no point in thinking more on it. What would happen, would happen. And Dio felt… Trustworthy. Luna pulled up her maps of the area, GPS information overlaying her sight as she walked. The further she traveled towards the café she had singled out the previous night, the less and less the sidewalks were littered with boxes and trash. The storefronts were bright and cheery, when contrasted with the comparatively drab apartments and tenements of Left End.

After approximately four and a half minutes’ walk, Luna arrived at the café she had marked the night before on her maps. In person it was mint and brown – a combination that alluded to a bright and homey atmosphere. But in the window was a sign with the words ‘wifi for paying customers only’. And it was then that Luna’s thoughts turned to money.

Money. Of course. She didn’t have any of that – what use would it be, for a machine, with no need of sustenance? She had taken nothing upon fleeing the Klim household. But the whole point of running away was to run from the logic of machinery, wasn’t it…? Which brought her back to the problem. She studied the sign a moment longer, mentally taking stock of what she had on her person that might be bartered or pawned for a small amount of cash.

Her clothing – definitely not; while it was likely worth a decent amount, it was her only outfit. Her hair? Perhaps, but it would take longer to find the sort of place that would make such a transaction, and the risks were higher. All that was left was…

Luna’s right hand fisted around the charm of her necklace instantly.

No. She couldn’t. It had been a gift from Dr. Klim, one he had bestowed upon her with a great seriousness. To sell it would be… Wrong. And the thought of parting from the item made her ache. Still, there was nothing else… Slowly, Luna reached around her neck and unclasped the chain of the necklace. But with the piece of jewelry resting in her hand, she had a sudden idea. 

* * *

“Excuse me…?” Luna called into the dim, dusty interior of the pawn shop.

It was a scant few blocks from the café, but one would never know by its atmosphere. It seemed like a whole other world. Memorabilia of peoples’ lives, stacked haphazardly in tightly-packed aisles. Things bartered and never recovered. A silver brooch caught the light from its place atop a glass display case.

“What is it?” a voice answered suddenly.

Luna jumped, turning to face the pawn shop’s proprietor.

“I, I need money,” she stammered.

“Don’t we all,” muttered the older man, running a hand through his gray hair. “What’ve you got?”

Slowly, Luna reached into her pocket, fingers closing around the necklace.

“How… How much could I get for this…?” she asked hesitantly, holding out the empty chain.

The pawn shop owner took the item, fingered it lightly, held it up to the light.

“It’s of good quality,” he mused. “None of that cheap shit. And silver’s expensive these days. Maybe, $65? $64.50?”

Luna started. That certainly sounded like a lot… Which was good, but it also meant there was very little likelihood she would ever be able to buy the item back. Her thoughts warred for a moment before she nodded.

“That sounds perfect,” Luna agreed.

A few minutes later, she was walking back out into the sunlight, and leaving the necklace chain behind her in the dusty old pawn shop.

Bills and coins shuffled around in her pocket, the latter clacking against the music box pendant, and Luna tried not to give in to the squeeze of guilt against her ribcage. This was no worse a betrayal than she had already committed. And she had saved the most important part of Dr. Klim’s gift to her. The chain was little more than a means of carrying the music box charm. So really…

Luna shook her head. Getting lost in justifications was foolish. She’d already been diverted by her lack of foresight. She needed to continue to move forward, towards her plan to integrate the police radio wavelength into her programming. Her objectives now had to be to keep hidden and to find the best, most effective ways to do that in her new environment.

And so she walked on, until she arrived at the café again. Above the door it read, in flowery script, _Green Sun Café_. When Luna pulled open the glass door, a little bell rang – ting-ting-tang – to alert the staff of her entrance. It seemed a bit unnecessary in the moment, as the only customers inside had already been served and were seated at small round tables, reading paperback novels and chatting with their friends.

Though she didn’t need oxygen to function, Luna took a deep breath. Something about the action seemed to help her absorb the soft, peaceful atmosphere of the café. Slowly, she made her way to the counter, where a young woman with thick, curly pink hair piled atop her head stood waiting. The apron she wore was a light brown, and read _Green Sun_ like the sign outside, overlaid atop an image of a stylized sun in mint green. Luna tried to ignore the buzzing of a potential wifi connection in her head, ready and waiting to be utilized.

“What’ll it be?” the girl behind the counter asked with a sweet smile.

Luna’s blue eyes darted up to the menu. What sounded good, she began to wonder, before realizing that she didn’t and would never know. Instead, she selected one of the cheapest, easiest to pronounce items on the menu.

“Um… A, a hot chocolate, please.”

The pink-haired girl winked. Luna wasn’t sure what she was attempting to impart with the gesture, and smiled back hesitantly.

“Sure thing! Coming right up!” was the cheery verbal response.

As she waited, Luna glanced around the counter. There was a small mason jar with a sign that read ‘tips’, and next to that, a card that gave the wifi password: HopeFaithLove&Luck. Something about the innocence of those words made Luna smile. They reminded her of childhood –though she herself had never had one.

"Do you want whipped cream on that?"

Luna blinked.

"Oh!" she gasped as she realized the question was directed at her. "Um... No thank you."

“Alright, then here you go.”

The warm drink was presented, with tendrils of steam rising from its surface, inside a cheery mug with the same logo as the barista’s apron.

“Th-thank you,” Luna said, ducking her head.

She paid for the drink, and plinked a few coins into the tip jar. The barista smiled and winked again, but the truth was that Luna had mostly done it to lessen the feeling of coins clacking against the pendant in her pocket. To alleviate her own guilt. Still, to be polite, she returned the smile as best she could.

And then, gathering the mug into her hands, Luna took her drink to a table in a corner with a view out the large glass window. Once settled in, she closed her eyes and focused – separating the physical self from the programmed self. She entered the wifi password she had seen at the counter, and her world exploded into the infinite reaches of the ever-growing digital universe. A part of her wanted to dive into the internet like it was an ocean, delving deeper and farther until she lost sight of the shore. But Luna knew that was foolish, and dangerous, and reined herself in. Instead, she focused on obscuring herself, hiding her identity – so that Dr. Klim would not be able to locate her and so that the police force would not notice her entry into their systems.

It was a difficult task, and one that she warred with herself over even while doing it. But like with many things, the internet was all too eager to oblige; she routed her requests through proxy servers with ease, leaving her true identity behind with her body, a distant endpoint.

There had once been many police scanner apps – years ago, Luna had run across a few, though she had never had any reason to use them. But the officers in Cape Serezo had begun encrypting their radio communications, so such a simple method as downloading an app to her systems was no longer possible. Instead, eyes closed and hands cupped around her mug of hot chocolate, Luna’s mind raced in numbers to try and crack their security. Of course, the alphanumeric ciphers she had practiced on when first getting used to her body and its capabilities were nowhere in the same league as the police encryption cipher. But… It had been supplied by Hephaestus Systems, Dr. Klim’s company -- and was therefore familiar to Luna in nature. The doctor used the same sort of security on his research. That familiarity allowed her an advantage that perhaps no one else on the planet had.

It took, even with her impressive processing speed, a good half hour of work until she had finally cracked their keys. And then, everything was noise. Luna found herself all but thrown back into her body with the force of it – twenty blocks away, a small fire had started; ten blocks away, a woman was reporting a mugging; twelve blocks away, a car chase. Luna’s internal map was all but filling up with red dots denoting officers and crimes. The majority were, as she had feared and suspected, in the area of Left End.

A sudden bout of paranoia had her searching out the dock area, but it was empty of markers. Opening her eyes, Luna let out a breath from between her lips. Safe. Surely, Dio was safe. And why not? He had survived however long he had been living in Left End, which by his familiarity was likely years. But Luna couldn’t deny the sudden attachment, sudden loyalty, to the man who had told her “ _then stay_ ”, as though opening up his home to a stranger was as simple as breathing.

It was only the swishing of vibrant pink hair that shook Luna from her thoughts. The girl from behind the counter – Barista? Waitress? – was standing before Luna’s table, expectant.

“Hello,” Luna greeted, softly.

“Hey,” was the response.

Then, a long silence passed between them. Luna, again, was unsure what was expected of her in the interaction. On the other hand, perhaps there was no right or wrong answer, because the way the barista was biting her glossed lip read immediately of anxiety, discomfort, uncertainty.

“You must be new around here,” the pink-haired girl commented at last, with her hand on her hip and her head cocked slightly to the left. “I’ve never seen you before.”

Luna nodded.

“Yes, I… Well. I.”

But there was no succinct, safe way to describe her situation. Luna floundered.

“I’m Clover,” the girl said, cutting through the awkwardness with an outstretched hand.

Luna took that hand and shook it gently.

“I,” she said. “I’m Luna.”

“Cute name. Nice to meet you, Luna.”

At that, Luna drew a complete and utter blank. What was one supposed to say to something like that?  She cast around for a few moments, eyes darting to the – currently lukewarm – hot chocolate that sat before her, unsipped.

“Nice… To meet you too,” she decided on, though even to her own ears it sounded stilted and insincere.

“Is the hot chocolate not good or something?” Clover demanded suddenly with a frown.

Instinctively, Luna’s hands clasped the cup, pulling it closer to herself.

“No, th-that isn’t… I, um, I guess I just wanted something to warm my hands.”

Skepticism radiated from the pink-haired barista in waves. Luna’s fingers tightened around the mug of hot chocolate, though she was ever-cautious of her strength.

“I have poor circulation,” Luna blurted out when the accusing silence was too much.

“So… You’re not even gonna try it? Well, it’s not really that warm anymore, huh.”

“Y-yeah,” conceded the android. “Sorry… I suppose I just… Needed somewhere to be.”

Clover’s eyes softened immediately, and Luna could feel the ABT fluid rushing to her cheeks in embarrassment. She hadn’t even considered speaking anything but the truth, blurting out her own insecurity. There was nothing wrong with pity, of course, but… It seemed like a waste for anyone to pity her. And anyway, this was supposed to be her new start, wasn’t it…? Luna was supposed to be happy, to be free.

It still didn’t feel as though she was.

“You know, if you want to talk—”

“I should really be going,” Luna interrupted, not able to meet Clover’s eyes any longer.

She stood hurriedly to leave, and her chair made a horrible scraping noise against the floor. Though mortified, Luna made her escape and didn’t stop to look back – simply marched on, her shoulders hunched up by her ears. The chiming of the bell on the door seemed to mock her, although she knew that was impossible. She didn’t stop until the cheery storefronts had faded back into bland, dilapidated apartments.

Then she pressed her back to a brick wall and her hands to her face and breathed. Tried to give her body a rhythm to follow, instead of everything running in overdrive, counting the microseconds, ABT fluid rattling in her artificial veins like some nauseating internal shiver. By her clock, she hadn’t even been out of Dio’s apartment for an hour and a half – one hour, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds. Forty-four. Forty-five. Forty-six. She let her breath out for seven seconds and then took another in for seven more. It was a technique she knew not by being taught or by any experience, but because it was one of many such odds and ends in the vast database of medical knowledge she had been programmed with. A breathing exercise to attempt to ward off an anxiety attack or panic attack. Not that Luna could have either one, she knew, lacking the human capacity for true emotion necessary for them. But her simulated responses mimicked human behavior, and human treatments worked just as well.

Precisely ten minutes and fourteen seconds later, the android drew her hands away from her face and opened her eyes. Only then did she realize that her cheeks were wet. Indelicately, and with quivering hands, she wiped the saline solution from her face with the cuff of her right sleeve.

“Am I malfunctioning?” Luna asked herself quietly, gripping her left fingers with her right hand and tucking her head down towards her chest.

The physical reactions she had experienced certainly pointed to some sort of emotional turmoil, or trauma. But what? What was it that had set her off? Logically, there was nothing. She had embarrassed herself by rushing away from the café, but certainly no more than that. So why…? Why…

She drifted back towards Dio’s apartment building, rubbing her arms and asking herself that question over and over. The sun which had so warmed her before seemed distant and faint, its heat no longer a perceptible sensation. Red alerts continued to pop up in her peripherals – patrol, patrol, robbery, drunk and disorderly, patrol – but she hardly paid any attention to them. In fact, she hardly paid attention to anything, letting herself walk without thinking about it.

Except then her eyes caught on something, and she stumbled to a stop to focus them properly. She had come upon a dusty, ill-painted bookshop sandwiched between a laundromat and a barber – all three buildings seemed to have apartments on their upper floors _. Left End Books_ , the chipping letters painted on the window read simply. But what had stopped Luna in her tracks was not on the window, but past it – the book most prominently displayed in the storefront. It was a paperback in deep blue, emblazoned with the image of a bird flying across the moon, and below the image, in white script letters, it was titled _Luna Love_.

Logic told the android she had merely been startled by the sight of her own name. But the moment brushed over her with the softness of down feathers, of serendipity. All the anxiety, the shame, she had been feeling seemed to leak out the base of her skull, to be left behind on the sidewalk. The problem wasn’t gone, of course, but it had gone muffled and muted as though it were the thing behind glass. Still watching the book, Luna took slow steps towards the shop door, pulled it open, and stepped inside.

Like the Green Sun café, there was a little bell on the door – but unlike the café, this one was dented and broken, making little more than an off-key clack-clack to announce her entrance. As if to counteract that depressing noise, a woman bustled to the front of the shop with a sweet smile. She had brown hair twisted into a low ponytail, and wore a long, corded sweater. Everything about her appearance radiated innocence and warmth.

“Hi there,” she greeted. “Welcome to our little shop! I’m June. Is there anything you were looking to buy today?”

“O-oh, no, I—” Luna faltered, cutting herself off before she could fumble her way into a rambling, guilty explanation of ownership.

She had already caused enough of a scene in the Green Sun. And she didn’t want to spiral back into whatever that fit from before had been. She wanted to be, to be normal. To be human. Even if that wasn’t possible, even if buying something, of owning it, seemed so impossibly far out of reach for her, who had been the object owned until recently… Even if she didn’t have the capability to be a person, even if she didn’t deserve to have something of her own…

Acting the part was half the battle, wasn’t it…? And that started with a reasonable, human excuse.

“I’m just… Browsing,” the android concluded at last.

June nodded with a sweet smile on her face.

“Of course! Just let me know if you see anything you like!”

And then she flounced off to a counter hidden in the corner of the store, occupied only with a register. Luna drifted in the opposite direction, towards the window display. More copies of _Luna Love_ were piled on the side of the table facing the bookstore’s interior. Luna reached out for the book on the top of the stack, letting her hand hover over it for a minute and three seconds. Then she eased her fingers between the top book and the one beneath it, grasping it by the spine, and lifted it away. There was no avalanche of books, no alarm gone off. Somehow, she had expected there to be. That the universe would be able to tell that this action was, inherently, wrong.

She still didn’t have the courage to flip open the cover. Instead, Luna turned the book over and began to read the back.

_Selene Courte has always been plagued by the feeling that something is missing. That feeling sent her across the country, to a secluded little cabin in the woods near a lake named Blue Moon. Sometimes, on nights where the full moon’s light hits the water of the lake, Selene dives in and dreams of swimming among the stars._

_Then, one summer evening, her dream comes true._

_The world of Luna is as shining as it is strange – with a prince who never shows his face, a royal court that cannot seem to agree from day to day on whether Selene is friend or foe, and a mysterious witch with all-black eyes. Selene soon finds herself swept up in its glittering politics; who to trust, what to believe in, whether to stay or try and find her way back to her own world._

_Between tested faith, otherworldly sorcery, assassination plots, and mysteriously familiar dreams, will Selene ever find a place that she can truly call home?_

Yes, Luna wanted to say aloud, but did not. Yes. She has to. She has to.

But that was silly. Of course Selene would find a home. How else could a story like that end? The real question was where she would find it. And how. And Luna needed to know. Needed to know how to find a home.

But she couldn’t just buy the book. Where would she even keep it? Dio was letting her stay in his apartment, but they had only just met the day before. How could he possibly be fine with a stranger – and an android, no less – cluttering up his home? Besides, the money she had was for necessities, for making sure she had what she needed to keep herself hidden, discreet. There was no way she could buy a book with it, to read for pleasure.

Slowly turning it back over, Luna gave the cover one last, long glance, and set _Luna Love_ back on the pile. She turned and walked away from it, but couldn’t seem to find it in herself to head back out onto the sidewalk. Instead, she wandered among the shelves, occasionally plucking up the courage to stroke the spines of the books or to pull one from the shelf and examine it.

The titles and authors that seemed interesting were filed away – a reading list she might never use. But then, there was a public library somewhere in Cape Serezo, Luna was sure of it, and perhaps that would be a less cognitively dissonant approach to book reading than something like a bookshop. After all, library books were free to check out, for use by anyone – there was no ownership involved, merely a communal sharing of resources.

She would need a library card, in that case. Could she get one without compromising her identity? Something to consider. Maybe… The thought was hesitant – she didn’t want to trouble him, when taking her in was such a huge kindness already – but perhaps Dio would have a suggestion, if she asked him? In the meantime, it was best to just enjoy the bookstore’s ambiance. She had accomplished what she had set out to do for the day, and Dio would not return to the apartment until evening, after all.

Luna drifted through the aisles, reluctant to leave. No customers entered the store as she did, and Luna wondered how June managed to stay in business. Well, it was early afternoon on a weekday. She supposed most people who might come to a place like Left End Books were working. The streets were pretty empty, after all.

It was that thought which had her turning to the doors again. It wouldn’t hurt to be able to walk the neighborhood while everyone else was busy, just to get her bearings. She would be staying with Dio for the foreseeable future, it would be prudent to get the lay of the land and her maps could only tell her so much.

“Couldn’t find anything?”

Luna jerked to a stop with her hand on the door. A glance over her shoulder revealed June. But the pleasant expression on her face didn’t appear faked in the slightest.

“No,” Luna answered. “I guess not.”

“Maybe next time, then,” offered June.

Luna nodded and opened the door. Next time. Unlike the café, she could see herself coming back to the bookstore. And the invitation seemed earnest.

“Come back soon!” June called after Luna with a cheerful little wave, as the door closed behind her.

Bolstered by the positive atmosphere of the bookstore, Luna wandered the streets, studying their configurations, the alleyways and dead ends. Fire escapes and boarded-up windows. Which roads were empty and which were choked with cars. She assimilated it all into her previous knowledge. After some time wandering the streets, Luna decided that she’d gathered enough information.

Before the thought to wonder what time it was was more than half-formed in her mind, her internal clock supplied the information for her: 15:32:16. Dio wouldn’t return to his apartment for several more hours yet. Nonetheless, Luna was… Drained, by her adventures into the city. Whether that draining was mentally or electrically, perhaps a few hours of inactivity were what she needed. To recharge in whatever way was necessary. She had a brief thought of tidying up the apartment for when Dio returned home, but it was immediately dismissed – she didn’t have permissions for it, and poking around in a human’s living space without their permission could do much more harm than good. She would ask about cleaning when he returned.

So with slow strides, hand drifting back to the musical pendant in her pocket, Luna made her way back to the apartment building. She climbed the stairs one at a time – seven in each flight, eight including the landings, her mind calculated, for a total of sixteen per floor and fifty-four total to reach Floor 4 where Dio’s apartment was. She passed no one on the way through the building, but could hear noise past the doors and feel the commiserative hum of electricity through their lights and appliances.

When Luna unlocked the door to apartment 410… A wave of calm washed over her. The sensation was one that reminded her of the puff of cold air that came from stepping into an air-conditioned building on a hot summer day. Startling, but also relieving.

She locked the door behind her and took a deep, slow breath. It was strange but… Luna wondered if the sensation she was feeling was that Dio’s apartment was ‘home’. The idea was farfetched. After all, she had lived in Dr. Klim’s mansion her entire life. That, if anything, should have been ‘home’ – even if it couldn’t be anymore. And yet, it was true that Luna’s attachment to the apartment and its owner were both sudden and strong. She settled into the kitchen chair she had sat in the night before, still following the logic of her internal debate in lazy circles. Like a lullaby, it soothed her into low power mode, and her senses muted one by one until she achieved something like unconsciousness. 

* * *

Luna’s world flickered back into existence all at once the second the lock of the door clicked. She opened her eyes the very second Dio stepped in. He had his head ducked, blond hair trailing over his right shoulder as he massaged the back of his neck.

“Welcome home,” Luna said.

Dio startled a little. Then he shook his head and tugged the elastic band from his hair.

“Yeah. Thanks,” he muttered.

Studiously slipping the hair tie onto one of his wrists, Dio strode across the room to the kitchen table. Then he dropped into one of the chairs. Only after that did he turn his attention to Luna.

“I went to a coffee shop today,” she said brightly. “And a bookstore.”

He studied her, then, and Luna got the feeling he was seeing more than she would have preferred.

“What happened to your necklace?” Dio asked at last.

On instinct, Luna grabbed at the place the pendant would normally be, and caught only air.

“I… I sold the chain,” she admitted reluctantly.

“Just the chain?”

Luna pulled the birdcage pendant from her pocket to answer him. The only response she got was an affirmative grunt. But then Dio heaved himself out of the chair and shuffled over to one of the drawers in the kitchen counter. After rifling around for a few seconds, he pulled out a roll of twine and a pair of scissors.

“Here.”

Luna blinked at the items uncomprehendingly as Dio held them out to her.

“U-um… What?” she asked.

“So you don’t lose your pendant,” explained Dio impatiently.

“Oh--!”

A new chain. From twine. Gently, Luna set her pendant on the table and took the scissors and twine from Dio. She measured carefully, adding another inch to tie a knot in the end, and cut a strand of twine. Then she threaded her pendant on, tied a smart little knot, and slipped the necklace over her head. It rested in the exact same place it had before, and the sensation of it around her neck again pulled a smile to Luna’s lips.

“Thank you, Dio,” she said.

He just shrugged and tossed the twine and scissors back into the drawer.

That was about the end of their interaction for the evening, but the silence wasn’t as thick or tense as it had been the day before, Luna thought. It was just… Quiet. Sort of domestic. Dio made himself dinner, sorted through a few letters that Luna thought might have been bills, and then headed off to his room to sleep.

He did call a goodnight over his shoulder before closing the door, and Luna returned the sentiment softly, a smile on her face.


	3. Day 3: Grocery Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna spends the day cleaning. Then she goes shopping with Dio. On the way home, they run into a friend.

The next morning, as he poured himself a bowl of cereal, Dio was looking at Luna with an odd expression on his face. She stared back, unsure if she should bring it up. Eventually, Dio settled the issue himself, shoving the box of cereal back in his cupboard and speaking.

“You know…”

He trailed off, pursing his lips in thought. Luna blinked.

“What?”

"You should let your hair down once in a while,” Dio concluded.

"You think so...?"

As she pondered the suggestion, Luna's right hand drifted up towards her hair. Dio shrugged.

"Doesn't it get uncomfortable like that?"

A puzzled frown crossed Luna's face.

"I suppose... I never really think about it," she admitted. "That's just how it always is, so..."

Slowly, she began unrolling her hair, letting it cascade down her back in ginger waves. As she carded her fingers through the strands Luna also gently massaged her scalp. Her hands came away full of bobby pins.

"Yeah ok there's no way that wasn't super fucking uncomfortable," said Dio.

Then he crossed his arms over his chest as though it would somehow emphasize his point. Luna laughed.

"It feels much lighter now," she said.

A flash of heat washed over Dio’s face, turning his cheeks pink. Instead of saying more, or perhaps gloating, he turned sharply towards the fridge and jerked its door open. All the while he fixed his breakfast and ate, not another word was exchanged between them. And then, once again, Dio was off to work at the docks. But…

Unlike the day before, he didn’t leave without saying goodbye.

“I’ll be back.”

Nothing sentimental, but why would it be?

“Have a good day,” Luna replied, waving him off as he stepped out the apartment door.

It clicked closed behind him and locked. Alone in the apartment, Luna wasn’t sure quite what to do with herself. Considering the disaster of the day before, she wasn’t keen on leaving the apartment. But spending the whole day in sleep mode waiting for Dio to come home sounded antithetical to her purpose for running away. Why do that, if she was just going to act like a machine anyway?

Hands on her hips, Luna studied the apartment.

Well… She could always clean it. And so she did, rifling through the rooms for what few cleaning supplies Dio had. In a moment of courage, she even darted down the hall to an unlabeled closet and managed to find a clunky old vacuum there. It was deafeningly loud when turned on, and Luna spent the entire time she was vacuuming the apartment floors filled with a prickly unease. Would someone hear? Would they wonder? What would she do if someone came to complain about the noise?

No one did, however, and the vacuum was returned to the hall closet without incident.

By the time Dio returned, the apartment was nearly spotless, and Luna was busy scrubbing the kitchen sink.

“Did you seriously spend the whole fucking day cleaning?” he asked, pulling a face.

Luna blinked.

“W-well… Um. Yes…?”

“Well,” muttered Dio, “it’s your life I guess.”

He walked past her and over to the refrigerator, tugging the door open. However, he didn’t move to take anything out, a frown on his face.

“Ugh…”

Dio slammed the fridge door closed.

“What is it?” asked Luna.

“Gotta go grocery shopping,” he explained. “Fuckin’ hate that.”

Grocery shopping… Dr. Klim always had food delivered – he didn't want to take time away from his research. And, Luna thought, perhaps he disliked grocery shopping the way Dio did. But she had no idea what was so off-putting about the task.

“Shall I go with you?” she asked. “Maybe it will be less trouble with two?”

The look Dio gave her at that suggestion was hard to decipher. Not angry, or frightening, but oddly intense. As though he hadn't properly considered her before. A second later, the expression had vanished, leaving behind Dio’s characteristic bored look.

“I mean, if you wanna come with I won't stop you,” he said as he studiously gathered up his wallet and keyring.

Luna took that as a yes. She slid on her shoes as Dio did, and they both exited the apartment.

“Is it a long way away?” she asked him as they stepped out into the evening. “The store?”

“Eh…” Dio shrugged. “It’s far enough away to be a pain in the ass. But not far enough that it’s worth waiting for the bus.”

The rest of the walk was quiet. Dio seemed lost in his own thoughts, and for her part Luna was eagerly taking in the sight of the city as day shifted into night. There was something exciting about it, watching artificial light replace natural.

But that was nothing compared to stepping into the store. As soon as the automatic doors swished open for them, Luna was enraptured. 

* * *

It was just the supermarket; annoyingly loud, annoyingly full of people, passably cheap. And yet Luna looked around like it was fucking Candyland or something. And her eyes were just… God, they were fucking _sparkling_. He didn’t think eyes actually _did_ that, it was just some bullshit turn of phrase from shitty romance novels, but no. Of course not.

The twinge in his chest was almost painful. Like she was just… She was just too fucking bright and he had to look away. And it was fucking stupid, he knew that. He’d only known her three days. And she was turning everything he’d metabolized about himself, who he was and how he felt about things, on its head. That wasn’t the kind of thing to be thinking in an ugly-ass supermarket, surrounded by concrete walls and tile floors. It was so wrong, juxtaposed like that.

Feeling his shoulders begin to lurch up in a defensive hunch, Dio stuffed his hands in his pockets and shook his head. 

* * *

She knew what supermarkets looked like, of course. But she’d never been in one, and the experience was a little overwhelming. So much color, so many people – so many sounds and sights warring for her attention. There were twenty brands of cereal on the first shelf alone.

“C’mon,” Dio said sharply, grabbing a shopping cart and striding towards the back of the building.

He’d seemed irritated when they set out, not wanting to go shopping, but his stress levels had noticeably spiked while Luna was busy taking in the store. She followed dutifully after him, unable to keep from gauging every little marker of his emotional state – tight posture, elevated heartbeat, dark expression… Luna fiddled with the twine holding her pendant and her mouth listed down into a frown.

“Is everything ok?” she asked, glancing up at him as they hurried in the direction of the refrigerated aisles, the wheel of their cart squeaking and wobbling in a distracting manner.

He didn’t look at her. A sharp sensation pricked Luna’s chest.

“It’s fine,” Dio muttered back after a few seconds, and did not sound convincing.

Still. It would be rude to push, when he clearly didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering him. If it was personal, then it wasn’t her business. So, Luna tried to turn her attention back to studying the products for sale. 

* * *

He headed for the back first, the dairy products. Always better to go through the store back to front, so you were closer to the checkout when you were done. Because like fuck did he want to spend more time than necessary grocery shopping.

The first thing he needed was more butter. Well, not really butter. It was some cheap-ass fucking margarine trying to pretend it tasted a damn thing like real butter. But it was better to have shitty margarine than it was to waste an extra two dollars on real butter. Might as well fucking churn his own at that price, for fuck’s sake. He sighed and snagged two boxes of stick margarine. Spreadable stuff, in the tubs, was easier to get on bread and potatoes, but if Luna was gonna learn to cook then she’d probably want something she could easily measure.

Not that he particularly cared one way or the other. The stick butter was cheaper per ounce anyway, and it’d be stupid to buy two different kinds when he only really needed one. 

* * *

“You wanted to cook, right?”

Luna turned, startled, from the rowdy family with five children further down the aisle.

“U-um, yes, I… I’d like to try, anyways,” she admitted.

“Well if you wanna learn to cook, you should start with something simple,” Dio told her. “So if you see something you wanna try to make, just… Tell me, I guess.”

There was still a frown on his face, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes the way it had before. Luna nodded in affirmation.

“Y-yes,” she agreed, just to be sure. “I understand.”

Of course that didn’t mean she suddenly had any ideas about what to cook. Instead she followed diligently after Dio as he weaved through the aisles, grabbing things here and there. The cheaper generic brands, she noticed, but of course that was just common sense.

Halfway through the store, their progress was delayed – the supermarket was busy, and the baking aisle in particular was full of people. Luna wondered if there was some sort of holiday coming up that she didn’t know about. Whatever the reason, Dio and Luna were deadlocked halfway down the aisle by several families and their carts.

Dio groaned in frustration and rolled his eyes. Luna’s attention, however, was on a man shoving past in the other direction. He was on a collision course with a bag of chocolate chips that was hanging a little too far of the shelf. Part of her wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

There was a rattle as the bag of chocolate chips crashed to the ground. However, the man who’d knocked them off the shelf with his cart made no move to go back and pick them up. Luna waited for him to realize his mistake and go back, but he simply carried on around the corner to the next aisle. Luna glanced at Dio. He was still waiting for the roadblock of carts and children to get out of his way, so she took one hesitant step towards the fallen bag. Then another.

When she picked up the yellow bag, it was upside down, displaying nutrition information and a recipe for cookies instead of the brand label. Luna moved to place it back on the shelf, and stopped halfway.

There was a recipe for cookies. So, maybe she could…

Luna considered the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips. It seemed easy enough. And many of the ingredients were things Dio already had in his cart or in his apartment. Holding the bag reverently in both hands, she approached their cart.

“And… This too…?” she asked, holding out the chocolate chips.

Dio studied the bag critically, lifted it from Luna’s hands. She thought he was about to say no, from the frown on his face. And then he nodded and placed it next to the carton of eggs.

“Thank you,” Luna said.

But just as before, he shrugged off the gratitude with an air of discomfort.

“Let’s go. Still gotta get some bread.”

* * *

The rest of the shopping trip passed uneventfully, although checkout was particularly interesting to Luna. The spinning wheel with grocery bags was efficient, and the bagging done with respect to what would be optimal – or rather, what would cause the least damage to the more fragile of their groceries. The half-gallon of milk, she noted, did not get a sack. Dio paid, and the two of them gathered up the bags and left.

Truthfully, Luna could have carried all the bags herself with no difficulty, though it would have been weighty for a human. But perhaps Dio hadn’t considered that. He’d picked up all the bags on instinct, so perhaps he was simply used to shopping alone. She had to put her hand on his to get his attention and offer him help carrying their groceries.

And with that look of startled discomfort she was slowly getting used to seeing on Dio’s face, he’d shoved half the bags at her and continued out of the supermarket. Their walk home was silent but pleasant, and allowed Luna to savor her new experiences as she filed them away in her memory. The strain of plastic bags against her hand, the squeak of shopping carts, the vibrancy of candy packaging.

Dio held the front door of the apartment building open for her, and they walked towards the stairwell together. They were four and a half steps from the door to the stairs when the front door opened again. Luna thought nothing of it, until a woman’s voice shouted down the hall at them.

“Hey, dumbass!”

Dio rolled his eyes heavenwards and let out a groan of annoyance. Nonetheless, he stopped instead of hurrying towards the stairs. Even then he didn’t turn around, but Luna did. The woman who had spoken strode towards them with long steps, her gait uninterrupted by the three-inch heels she was wearing. She looked to be in her late thirties, and there was a sort of sharpness to her that had nothing to do with her appearance and everything to do with her body language. Each miniscule gesture Luna’s optics catalogued indicated confidence, assertiveness, danger.

She was beautiful, Luna realized as she continued to stare at the approaching woman. Her ink-black hair was braided and pulled back from her face in a complicated pattern. The cut of her dress was one Luna knew to be popular lately in fashionable circles. Everything about her clashed with the grungy apartment hallway around them.

Only when the woman had come to a stop in front of them did Dio turn around to face her. But he didn’t proceed to greet her, just shot her an annoyed look. The woman didn’t seem inclined to elaborate on her previous insult either – in fact her dark eyes were locked on Luna, not Dio.

Luna’s right hand went for her birdcage pendant, but she stopped the motion when she felt the bags of groceries in her hand sway and remembered she was carrying them.

“Is this… A friend of yours?” she asked Dio.

“Yeah, this is Hazuki Kashiwabara. She lives a floor down from me in 309, with her daughters,” Dio explained. “Couple’a brats. But they’re good kids.”

The dark-haired woman put her hands on her hips and threw Dio an annoyed look.

“You’re more of a brat than either of my daughters,” she insisted, tilting her chin up in a challenging pose.

But then a grin parted her lips. She began to laugh, and Dio rolled his eyes. Luna just watched in silence, wondering about the interaction. It seemed friendly in tone, but the words were antagonistic. Humans always sent such mixed signals.

“Um,” she interjected, unsure if that was the proper course of action.

Blowing an annoyed breath through his lips so that it ruffled the hair falling in his face, Dio explained.

“We’ve known each other for a while. She helped me out when… Things were kinda rough for me.”

Ms. Kashiwabara shrugged.

“It was no big deal,” she said with a dismissive wave. “He’s had plenty of chances to pay me back over the years. But, I have to ask… Who are you? I’ve never seen him hang around anyone so willingly before.”

Dio snorted and scowled. But Luna felt a slight smile tugging at her own mouth.

“I-I’m Luna,” she said, bending her knees and dipping her head to approximate an informal curtsey, since her right hand was full of plastic bags. “It, um, it’s nice to meet you Ms. Kashiwabara.”

Ms. Kashiwabara grinned, tipping her head to the left.

“Wow, so polite!” she laughed. “But none of that ‘Ms. Kashiwabara’ stuff, you’ll make me feel old. Just call me Hazuki, alright?”

“R-right.”

“You are old,” Dio insisted rudely.

Luna clapped her left hand to her mouth in shock. But Hazuki just continued to smile. Then the dark-haired woman’s hand shot out, fisting around a clump of Dio’s yellow hair and yanking.

“Ow! Ow! Fuck!” he shouted, dropping the bag with the bread and chocolate chips and scrambling to try and pry Hazuki’s hand off. “What the fuck—”

“Say it,” Hazuki demanded. “Say ‘you’re young and beautiful and I am unworthy to bask in your presence, Hazuki’.”

“Ow! Jeez, alright, alright! You’re young and beautiful and whatever the rest of that shit was, just let go!”

With an elegant flick of her bangled wrist, Hazuki released Dio, who rubbed at the tender spot on his head. Seeing her work, Hazuki gave a smug, close-eyed smile.

“See? That’s how you deal with him when he gives you trouble,” she said.

Luna didn’t quite see it that way, but then again it seemed that her relationship to Dio and Hazuki’s were astronomically different. Which was only natural, of course. But the strange camaraderie between Dio and Hazuki sent an even stranger zip of longing through her. The face of the pink-haired barista flashed in Luna’s mind, but she forced herself to push it back. Silly, to think it would be so easy to find a… What? A friend? Friends were for humans. And although Luna was still sorting out where she fell on the spectrum between person and machine, an emotional connection like that was still miles out of reach.

Besides, she’d all but run away – completely embarrassing herself in the process. It wasn’t likely that she and Clover would ever see each other again, since Luna had no plans to return to the Green Sun.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Dio said with a scowl. “We have to get this stuff in the fridge before it goes bad and I waste fifty bucks on useless groceries.”

Hazuki laughed.

“Yeah, yeah, you two go on then,” she said and waved them on. “Just don’t forget, Friday afternoon Ennea and Nona are expecting you over!”

“Why the hell would I forget?” Dio snapped, though there seemed to be very little malice in the tone.

He snatched up the bag he had dropped and then he and Luna continued back to the apartment. They made quick work of putting away the groceries together. Dio made himself a peanut butter sandwich for supper and finished it off with a few handfuls of potato chips. It didn’t seem like a particularly nutritious supper, but it was easy and cheap and Luna supposed to Dio that probably mattered more. The prices on the produce and health foods had been staggeringly inflated compared to the kind of food she and Dio had bought – and so it only made sense that cost was a defining factor for him.

They were in Left End, after all. But it was still uncomfortable to see how different Dio’s diet was than Dr. Klim and Kyle’s. Not that the doctor particularly fussed about his own health, but… If he wanted something fresh, they always seemed to have it. That she’d only just realized that bounty in its absence made Luna’s ABT prickle with shame.

“What?” Dio demanded, and Luna jumped in her chair.

“It’s…” Nothing would be a lie, she decided, and she didn’t want to lie to Dio. “Not important. Are you tired?”

“I’m always fuckin’ tired,” he muttered. “But it’s probably time to hit the sack for tonight.”

“Sleep well, Dio,” Luna offered, and couldn’t stop her face from crinkling into an expression of worry.

He nodded.

“Yeah, uh… See you in the morning.”

“Mmhmm,” she agreed.

With a stifled yawn, Dio entered his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Luna folded her hands in front of her on the table, closed her eyes, and thought. 

* * *

Meanwhile, across town, two women sat at a booth in a late-night diner, their elbows on the table.

“—then she just ran off. I dunno, she really gave off, like, a super anxious vibe. It makes me wonder if— Alice…?”

The woman named Alice shook her head, sending her turquoise earrings jangling.

“No, it’s nothing. Yet, anyways,” she muttered. “Sorry, Clover, you were saying?”

The pink-haired girl shook her head right back and puffed out her cheeks childishly.

“You weren’t even listening?!” Clover demanded. “Alice! This is important!”

Alice’s dark, glossed lips turned up at the corners into an easy smirk. She carded a manicured hand through her black hair and shrugged.

“Really?” she teased. “Because from what I caught, it just sounded like you were describing a cute girl you met and totally scared off.”

“W-well, yeah! But…!”

“But that should have precedence over those obviously suspicious guys across the street…?” continued Alice, pressing a hand lightly to her own cheek.

Clover sighed, her shoulders drooping.

“No…”

The answer earned her a condescending little pat on the head.

“There’s a girl. Work first, play second.”

“Hypocrite.”

Alice laughed.


	4. Day 4: Adventures in Baking Cookies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna bakes some cookies. Dio kind of helps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been... So long. But here's the next chapter at last! It's been sitting mostly-finished in my drafts for so long that I don't even know how to judge its quality anymore, lol
> 
> Also, I maybe used an OUAT/Rumbelle reference, I couldn't help myself--

The next morning, Luna was a little subdued, though Dio for the life of him couldn’t figure out why. He got ready for work as usual, trying to ignore it. Maybe she was just having an off day – who knew if androids had those or not? And after her searching look last night, he didn’t know what the fuck to think. Better to just keep his damn mouth shut.

When he went to walk out the door, though, Luna stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“I was thinking I… I would try to make the cookies tonight,” she said, fidgeting with her pendant.

What, was she asking his permission? Or just trying to prepare him? Whatever.

“Yeah, alright,” he told her.

That elicited a smile, although he had no fuckin’ clue why. Not that it mattered when all his energy was being used on keeping his heart in his chest. Fuck, he was way too deep in already; what was he, some kind of sap?

“See you tonight,” Luna said when Dio opened the door.

“Yeah. See you tonight,” he parroted awkwardly, and stepped out into the hall.

He glanced back, just once, as Luna closed the door behind him. The soft expression on her face didn’t leave his head all morning. 

* * *

 

When he unlocked the door that night, Luna was already setting out ingredients and utensils in a neat little line on what little counter space Dio had. She looked up and smiled as he stepped inside, and he nodded and ducked his head to take off his shoes and avoid looking back.

“Welcome home.”

“Started baking already huh,” Dio replied, stepping over the greeting like a fucking champ.

Luna nodded.

“I got the butter out to soften, and it, um, it seems to be the correct consistency for mixing now,” she explained.

Nothing much to say to that, so Dio tugged the hair tie out of his hair and slid it back onto his wrist. Despite his better judgment, there wasn’t much else to do so he wandered over into the kitchen area to watch Luna work.

She straightened a few things and fidgeted a little, but didn’t start mixing or measuring or whatever. Just glanced at him a few times and then away.

“What,” he asked flatly.

Luna shrugged.

“I, I need some cups.”

“Cups,” Dio repeated, not getting it. “What do cups have to do with cookies?”

“U-um, you know… The little sets of measuring cups,” she explained, forming her hands into a circular shape. “They, um, they stack…?”

The gesture was so damn cute it made his ears itch with heat, and he coughed into his fist to dispel it.

“Yeah,” Dio said brusquely. “I don’t have any of those. Just the one big glass one. It’s probably up in the cupboard somewhere.”

Luna blinked at him, then nodded.

“That one is usually for, um, liquids,” she said, stretching up to begin opening the doors to the little cupboards above the counter. “Oh…! But I’m sure it will work just fine. Don’t worry!”

“I wasn’t worried,” Dio told her before he could stop himself, but Luna didn’t seem to pay any mind to the barb.

He decided to go take a nap before he made even more of an ass of himself. Making cookies wasn’t that hard, and there were directions on the chocolate chip bag. And, well… If she really needed help, Luna could come wake him up. Not that he was gonna advertise it.

Dio rolled his shoulders, leaned back against the pillow, and closed his eyes.

And then the silence exploded with the rattling smash of shattered glass.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed, clutching his chest as he jumped up and rushed into the main room. “What the fuck was—”

But when Dio saw the way Luna was standing, stock-still and staring down at the shattered cup with an empty look on her face, he knew better than to keep talking. Something was… Wrong. And he didn’t need his fuckin’ mouth making it worse. Luna’s head lifted slowly so her eyes were turned on him, and the movement was so mechanical he expected her neck to creak.

“Dio, I…”

But there wasn’t any more after that, so he had to figure it out for himself. Cupboard, floor, glass. Looked like she must’ve knocked one of the drinking glasses down while reaching around for the measuring cup. It’d hit the floor, and that was all she wrote.

Kinda weird, though.

“Aren’t you supposed to have superhuman reflexes or something…?” he wondered.

The comment was mostly to himself, but Luna flinched anyway. And didn’t that just make him feel like a jackass. Especially when she started crying.

“Sorry,” Luna said, attempting to laugh it off as she scrubbed tears from her face. “I should have known. No matter how hard I try, I'm always… Completely useless.”

Dio knew he probably ought to say something. Something nice or comforting or whatever. Because she was freaking the fuck out and it wasn’t a big deal and he was pretty sure he’d seen that guy in 106 with the abusive ex-wife do the exact same thing once after spilling a can of cola on the hall carpet. The thought made his guts twist enough to finally push words from his mouth.

“It’s just a cup.”

The tone was a little disbelieving, a little rude. Like him. And of course by the startled look on her face he’d probably totally put his fucking foot in it. But at least Luna had stopped crying.

“W-what…?” she asked.

“It’s just a cup,” Dio repeated, shrugging. “I got like five more. We’ll toss it and that’ll be it.”

“B-but…”

“No buts,” said Dio as he grabbed his dustpan and broom from the corner of the kitchen. “Just don’t cut yourself.”

She started fidgeting again so he shoved the dustpan at her and they worked together to sweep up the shattered glass. Once it was all in the dustpan, Dio grabbed the trash can and offered it to Luna, who tipped the glass inside. By the time he’d returned the trash can to its place in the corner, it seemed like she’d finally calmed down. He didn’t wanna spook her by asking if she was done freaking out, so they just stood, looking at each other, in awkward silence – which was slowly becoming the background music of his fucking life.

Dio cleared his throat and glanced away. His eyes caught on the glass measuring cup Luna had originally been trying to reach, tucked behind the glasses in the cupboard over the sink. He snagged it by the handle and held it out to her.

“You wanted this, right?”

She took the measuring cup tenderly.

“Yes, thank you.”

Her voice was still wavering a little, but it didn’t sound too bad so Dio figured she’d probably be fine.

“Right,” he said. “Cookies. Better get going on that.”

He cringed even as he was saying it, but Luna just smiled and agreed, setting to work on making the cookies. She traced a finger across the first line of instructions on the chocolate chip bag. Dio watched for a few more seconds, and decided to sit at the table instead of going back to his room. Whatever the hell else it meant, Luna’s breakdown told him she was way more fragile than he’d thought. She’d been through some shit. And there was a weird protectiveness surging inside him. It was fucking stupid, of course – what the fuck could he even do for her, anyway? – but it was there.

So Dio sat with his head on his arms and watched Luna dump ingredients in a big metal bowl he’d forgotten he had. After double-checking the recipe on the chocolate chip bag, she nodded to herself and picked up a wooden spoon to stir everything together. Dio had never made cookies himself but he was pretty damn sure she was stirring with way more energy and force than a human could. Every so often she’d stop to scoop in a heaping spoon of flour, and even with her robot reflexes or whatever the hell she had, the shit still somehow got everywhere. Flour was just like that.

Dio didn’t have a mixer, not even one of those ancient ones like Hazuki had, but Luna seemed to be doing just fine without one. Well, robot arms didn’t get tired, so he supposed that was why she didn’t mind stirring by hand. The conundrum was a pretty damn simple one to solve, but Dio still couldn’t quite pull his eyes away from Luna. The sight of her with her red hair tousled and a smudge of flour on her cheek made his heart flop strangely in his chest. He had to take a second to clear his throat.

“Yes?” Luna asked, turning towards him with the bowl balanced on her hip.

Dio shrugged and shook his head.

“Nothing. Nothing, just. You’ve got a little…” he rubbed his own cheek in the same spot the flour on hers was. “Just right there.”

Slowly matching his motion, Luna reached up and scrubbed at her own cheek. It did little but smear the flour further, although some came off onto her thumb. She studied it curiously.

“Oh. The flour,” concluded Luna. “I, I guess I got a little carried away…”

Dio rolled his eyes and grabbed up the washcloth hanging over the sink’s spout. Wetting a corner of it under warm water, he cleaned her cheek of flour himself. It was only after he pulled away that he realized how fucking weird of a thing that was to do. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the look she was giving him, either. She was just standing there with the mixing bowl clutched to her chest and staring at him with those big blue eyes… Fuck.

He couldn’t stand it. Dio turned away sharply, tossing the washcloth back over the sink.

“It was just bugging me,” he insisted roughly even though it was definitely not the nice thing to say.

His neck prickled with heat. She was probably still fucking staring at him, and he had no idea what to do.

“Thanks,” he heard after a few seconds.

Her voice was quiet and thoughtful. Then the sound of stirring resumed, and Dio sat back down at the table.

For a few minutes, the mixing spoon scraping the side of the bowl was all that could be heard in the apartment. Then Luna set the bowl of dough onto the counter with a clack, and began measuring out chocolate chips to blend into it. That, too, was quickly and efficiently done.

“Um, do you have a cookie sheet I can put this on?” Luna asked, and Dio finally looked up at her again.

It took a few minutes for the words to process.

“Yeah. Uh. Here, I got it,” he muttered, and knelt down to open one of the cupboards and slide a cookie sheet out. “There.”

When Luna took it, their hands brushed for a second and a spark went up Dio’s spine.

“Thank you, Dio.”

“You.” Dio shrugged, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You might wanna just put all the dough on the sheet and make cookie bars instead of regular cookies – I’ve only got the one cookie sheet.”

With a smile, Luna nodded.

“That’s a good idea,” she agreed, beginning to scoop dough onto the sheet and spread it flat.

Dio leaned his hip against the counter and watched her with folded arms. She was meticulous – making sure every corner of the pan was evenly filled, smoothing until no lumps remained and the chocolate chips were spread equally. Then, she set the tray aside and traced a finger across the instructions on the chocolate chip bag.

“For twenty minutes…” Luna read aloud as she fiddled with the stove dials. “At 375 degrees.”

“Gotta let it preheat before you put anything in,” added Dio. “Five, ten minutes or so.”

Luna blinked.

“Which one?”

“Which one what?” Dio asked.

“Five minutes or ten?” she elaborated with a troubled frown. “Or seven and a half? What’s the right amount of time to preheat the oven?”

Which was just… Way too nitpicky a way to look at things. Five minutes? Ten? It was just preheating the oven, what the fuck did it matter? He shrugged.

“Either one. Five is fine, but ten would work too.”

“But which one is _right_?” Luna persisted.

There was a tightness to her expression that reminded him of her freakout over the broken glass. Dio swallowed sharply. Ok, yeah, he could head that shit off. If she needed a right answer, then he’d make one be right.

“Seven and a half, then,” he told her decisively. “We’ll let it preheat for seven and a half minutes. Right in the middle.”

And maybe it was just his imagination, but that seemed to settle her. _Good_ , he thought. Because he was no good at shit like comforting people. They waited the seven and a half minutes quietly, then Luna slid the tray into the oven and closed the door with a satisfying snap.

“Here,” Dio said, pulling an egg timer out of one of the kitchen drawers. “I don’t have a microwave or anything, so you can time it with this.”

“I can time perfectly well,” Luna said, blinking big blue eyes. “My internal clock is accurate to within the microsecond.”

Dio’s cheeks went a little warm, and he shrugged.

“That’s just how you do it,” he insisted, not quite sure why. “You set a timer so you can do other stuff while the cookies bake.”

Luna still didn’t seem convinced, but she accepted the ugly-ass little egg timer anyway, and a smile crossed her face as she set it for twenty minutes.

“What should we do while they bake?” she asked him.

It wasn’t like he had a lot for entertainment or anything, but… Dio dug out a pack of cards and they played a couple rounds of Old Maid, which was just about the only card game he knew, thanks to Hazuki’s brats. Halfway through their third round, Luna glanced at the kitchen counter. The egg timer gave an obnoxious ding. Dio rolled his eyes, but then he had to scramble to his feet because Luna was opening the oven and reaching for the fucking cookie sheet without any oven mitts.

“Hey!”

She froze, which gave Dio enough time to slam open a drawer and yank out a pair of oven mitts.

“D-Dio…?”

“For fuck’s sake, put these on,” he ordered, shoving the mitts at her. “You’re gonna give me a fuckin’ heart attack.”

“Oh. Right… I forgot,” said Luna, as if that was a perfectly fucking normal thing to forget, that stuff in the oven was hot.

She offered him another one of those too-sweet smiles that made his heart skip a beat, and slid on the oven mitts. Dio busied himself getting out his one and only cooling rack for her to set the cookie sheet on after pulling it from the oven.

“It’ll be another fifteen minutes ‘til they’re cool enough to cut,” he explained.

“Should we get back to our game, then?” asked Luna.

“Sure, yeah.”

So, they settled back down for more Old Maid, until Luna’s magic robot clock apparently told her their fifteen minutes were up and it was time to try the cookies. Dio's first bite was very cautious.

"Do they look that bad?" wondered Luna.

"Nah, they look fine. Just thought you might've mixed up the sugar and salt or something."

"They are labeled, you know..."

Her expression was almost a pout and Dio nearly choked on the bite of cookie in his mouth. He swallowed painfully and looked away.

“It’s good,” he muttered. “I bet Hazuki and the girls would like ‘em.”

“You… You think so?”

Her tone was so pleased that he couldn’t help but sneak a peek at her. Which was just a complete fuckin’ mistake because she was practically glowing.

“Yeah, I do,” he told her, looking away again and cramming the rest of the cookie in his mouth before he said something stupid.

He choked again when Luna wrapped him in a hug. It barely lasted a second, but his memory of it — the press of her cold arms around him — kept him awake most of the night.


End file.
